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Should Villains Be More Powerful Than Heroes?


PamelaIsley

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17 minutes ago, BoloOfEarth said:

"Did I mention that monitor is on a taped delay?  (hits fast forward to show the room filling even faster and covering the hostage's head)"  Or maybe "To add a sense of emergency, in a few seconds explosives will soon seal off the only route to the damsel.  Tick, tock, hero..."  Or my fave:  "Before you think of taking me down first, be aware there's a device in the room that will trigger explosives to kill her instantly if it doesn't continue to hear my dulcet tones or contagious laughter."  (Then you can have the villain giving a running commentary as the hero saves the hostage... after first disabling the explosives.)

Just to play devil's advocate, all of those are also horribly likely to backfire if the PC or player distrusts the villain.  The tape could be delayed to the point that the hostage is already dead, the bombs could be rigged to go off at anytime, and the voice trigger would make a wonderful anti-hero trap. 

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Well, my point was whether we should simulate what we see in the comics with something on the character sheet, not necessarily whether those things are good or not.

 

One of the tropes is the mastermind villain who can't stand up to hero in a fair fight.  Another is the one-trick pony... who can't stand up to the hero in a fair fight.  What's the best way to represent characters like that?

 

I actually prefer the old 4th edition writeup for Rainbow Archer.  She's a non-powered human who just happens to have a 35 Dex.  This means she's almost always going first.  In a  simulationist sense, this could represent someone in comics who is almost always the surprise attacker.  Given that she's got 15 PD, a 15 Con, and x2 Stun from physical attacks, I think that's exactly what she's supposed to be.  She's a one-trick pony who is really dangerous if she's in her element (i.e., going first), and her build is set up to do that.  But outside of that situation, she falls apart.

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Oh how I love me one -trick ponies! However what’s nice about many of the villains from CKC is that from an example use, it’s neat to see some of the abilities of older villains expanded. Even though he gives suggestions for ramping up villains or ramping down, perhaps a neat example would have been say Howler at three different power levels. 

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5 minutes ago, Ninja-Bear said:

I forgot to point out though that Heroes in 6th (not as sure about 5th) are at starting are more powerful than older editions. This probably had an impact on villain designs in 5/6th ed.

 

Maybe.  Although the villains are still more powerful than the 400 point standard 6E hero.  Leaving aside points, villains OCVs and DCs are just out and out outrageous in many cases.  The number of them that just casually have +3 bonuses to their main attacks hidden in the skill section is astonishing.  

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1 hour ago, Greywind said:

Experience counts. That's where the levels come in.

Totally agree. I think it would’ve been neat to see a villain with different experience levels. Of course some of the experience should campaign specific I.e. perhaps a special attack versus a specific player character. Or maybe show how you could cull the various powers of a villain to make them a one-trick pony but you have say three different power builds and again you (as GM) choose the one that suits you group.

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3 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Btw Pamelaisley are the characters in 5th pretty much the same as in 6th? As in background the same and Powers the same but the actual mechanics different due to the changes from 5th to 6th? Wondering because some legacy characters have changed from 3rd to 4th to 5th and 6th (what little I have )

 

I think the characters in 6E are largely what appeared in either News of the World or the 5E books.  I am sure that some are different that didn't appear in News of the World, but I haven't done a line by line comparison.

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25 minutes ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Pamelaisley do you have a list that you want to use that you think are overpowered?

Saying all of them would be facetious.  :)

 

All of the Master Villains are unusable.  The one in particular that I would like to use is Gravitar (14 OCV[!!] and 20DCs on some powers) .  She would need rebuilt totally from scratch.  She's more like the goddess / embodiment of gravity than a supervillain as constructed. 

 

From the solo book, Anubis (13 OCV, 16 DCs), Cateran (13 OCV, 15 DCs), Green Dragon (13 OCV, 15 DCs), Howler (just needs characteristics fixed), Jade Phoenix (15 OCV), Lady Blue (15 DCs), Mechassassin (12 OCV), Photon (12 OCV), Talisman (characteristics only), and Utility (12 OCV) are all characters I could see using but wouldn't until they were scaled down more reasonably. 

 

Honestly, the point of the thread wasn't to nitpick individual stat blocks.  It was to kind of address the issue that almost all published villains are being built with 400+ points, while heroes are presented as 300 or 400 point characters.

 

Edit: By the way, a big shout out to Foxbat, Tachyon, and Pulsar for being constructed according to the rules and scaling reasonably. Their characteristics need work, of course, but I really appreciate the attempt that was made with their sheets.

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Pamelaisley the good news is that most of the villains that you listed are legacy villains! 

Here's a list and where they appeared that I know of:

Green Dragon 3rd ed Champions

Howler 3rd

Lady Blue Enemies I (1st ed)

Mechassasin Enemies III

Utility Enemies I (1 ed)

 

In these forms, they were only half a page each write up. Even when updated to 4th ed, they were only one page each.

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For got to mention. Green Dragon got more powerful in Watchers of the Dragon book (4th). He went from 15 STR to 25 STR and that where he got his Stances Powers from (well that power was first introduced in UMA 4th) I never liked the Stances MP myself.

 

Too had you don’t have access to Classic Enemies and BBB cause then your work I feel would be already done for you. All you would have to do for them is update mechanics from 4th to 6th.

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5 minutes ago, Ninja-Bear said:

For got to mention. Green Dragon got more powerful in Watchers of the Dragon book (4th). He went from 15 STR to 25 STR and that where he got his Stances Powers from (well that power was first introduced in UMA 4th) I never liked the Stances MP myself.

 

Too had you don’t have access to Classic Enemies and BBB cause then your work I feel would be already done for you. All you would have to do for them is update mechanics from 4th to 6th.

The extra work is actually pretty minimal (beyond the thought exercise).  You would need to re-enter all of these stats into Hero Designer anyway to get a usable sheet for a villain you'd want in the campaign.  Once the data is in Hero Designer, scaling someone down is pretty simple.

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I think villains should be equal to or a little stronger that heroes.

 

1) Many villains suffer from some sort of complication which make them focus on something other than being efficient in combat. They can be after revenge, after the loot, showboating, vain, competitive against their partner, distrustful of their partner, or all sorts of things which distract them from being their best in combat and working together well with their group.

 

2) When the game is multiple villains vs the PC's, the GM has to do all the thinking and planning for the villains. The players each get to sit there while other players are acting and think about what they'll do next while a GM has to think on the fly each time he has a character he controls act. Unless the GM wants the game to slow to a crawl, the GM can't take the time to maximize the combat efficiency of the characters he controls.

 

The traditional way of balancing that out is making the villains a bit more powerful than the heroes. Or at least more powerful in their niche ability than the heroes.

 

So you get a lot of Sabretooth vs Wolverine or Wendigo vs Wolverine...which leaves Wolverine having to try to either outlast or out-think his competition rather than beating them through superior savagery.

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In this discussion, I'm strongly reminded of one Iron Man comic book from the 1980's.

 

He was going to some multi-millionaire mastermind's yacht, I think either Stane or Justin  Hammer, with the idea of beating the hell out of him.

 

The mastermind had used his immense wealth to hire literally 40-50 villains (who'd faced off one-on-one against solo heroes like Captain America, Daredevil, and Spiderman) to act as his personal army of bodyguards.

 

Iron Man ended up just plowing through the villains in a short but epic battle because Batroc the Leaper, The Ringer, The Spot, The Constrictor, and a lot of other villains who can legitimately take up a whole issue fighting many heroes really shouldn't be able to stand up against Iron Man.

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Pamelaisley the list I posted upstream, most of those villains can come in around 300 CP -even in 6th I just read over Cateran. With her though cause if her background, even by lowering her stats, I think she still might come in over 400 CP but since a bunch of skills are Non-combat, I think that should be ok. I would reduce her STR  to either 35-40. And Res pro should be maybe 8-10 not 14.

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11 minutes ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Pamelaisley the list I posted upstream, most of those villains can come in around 300 CP -even in 6th I just read over Cateran. With her though cause if her background, even by lowering her stats, I think she still might come in over 400 CP but since a bunch of skills are Non-combat, I think that should be ok. I would reduce her STR  to either 35-40. And Res pro should be maybe 8-10 not 14.

 

Cateran's main problem, like many others, is just a casually absurd OCV.

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16 minutes ago, PamelaIsley said:

 

Cateran's main problem, like many others, is just a casually absurd OCV.

And that’s the argument for removing Figured Characteritics.  I would take the suggestion in CKC and reduce her Dex to 20 or perhaps 21 then reduce her CV to 7. I would also reduce her CSL from +4 to +2.  I think with her background she should be in Legendary Benchmark though. 

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2 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Here's a list and where they appeared that I know of:

Green Dragon 3rd ed Champions

Howler 3rd

 

Both appeared in 1st edition. (And 2nd, naturally.)

 

The full list of 1e example villains:

Armadillo

Dragonfly

Green Dragon

Howler

Icicle

Mechanon

Ogre

Pulsar

Shrinker

 

Dragonfly made it into 4e, but was dropped in 5e. The others are still around.

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10 minutes ago, assault said:

 

Both appeared in 1st edition. (And 2nd, naturally.)

 

The full list of 1e example villains:

Armadillo

Dragonfly

Green Dragon

Howler

Icicle

Mechanon

Ogre

Pulsar

Shrinker

 

Dragonfly made it into 4e, but was dropped in 5e. The others are still around.

 

Except they ruined Icicle by turning her into Snowblind.  Even if they had to change the name of the character, there was no reason to change her backstory into something that dark.  

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